Marvel Comics
In 1965, Thomas moved to New York City to take a job at DC Comics as assistant to Mort Weisinger, then the editor of the Superman titles. Thomas said he had just accepted a fellowship to study foreign relations at George Washington University when he received a letter from Weisinger, "with whom I had exchanged one or two letters, tops", asking Thomas to become "his assistant editor on a several-week trial basis." Thomas had already written a Jimmy Olsen script "a few months before, while still living and teaching in the St. Louis area," he said in 2005. "I worked at DC for eight days in late June and very early July of 1965" before accepting a job at Marvel Comics.
This came after his chafing under the notoriously difficult Weisinger, to a point, Thomas said in 1981, that he would go "home to my dingy little room at, coincidentally, the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, during that second week, and actually feeling tears well into my eyes, at the ripe old age of 24." Familiar with editor and chief writer Stan Lee's Marvel work, and feeling them "the most vital comics around, Thomas "just sat down one night at the hotel and ... I wrote him a letter! Not applying for a job or anything so mundane as that ... I just said that I admired his work, and would like to buy him a drink some time. I figured he just might remember me from Alter Ego." Lee did, and phoned Thomas to offer him a Marvel writing test.
The writer's test, Thomas said in 1998, "was four Jack Kirby pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2 ... [Stan Lee] had Sol [Brodsky] or someone take out the dialogue. It was just black-and-white. Other people like Denny O'Neil and Gary Friedrich took it. But soon afterwards we stopped using it." Thomas was at DC the next day, proofreading a Supergirl story, when Steinberg called to have Thomas meet with Lee during lunch. "Then minutes after I met Stan, he asked me what he had to do to get me away from DC. I [told] him all he had to do was offer me the $100 a week which Mort had offered me ... in Missouri, but which had dropped to $100 a week, mysteriously, when I actually showed up." He returned to DC to give "indefinite notice" to Weisinger, but Weisinger ordered him to leave immediately and "I was back at Marvel less than an hour after I first left, and had a Modeling with Millie assignment to do over the weekend. It was a Friday."
To that point, editor-in-chief Lee had been the main scripter of Marvel publications, with his brother, Larry Lieber, picking up the slack as a sometime-scripter of Lee-plotted stories. Thomas soon became the first new Marvel writer to sustain a presence, at a time when comics veterans such as Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, Leon Lazarus, and Don Rico, and fellow newcomers Steve Skeates (hired a couple of weeks earlier) and O'Neil (brought in at Thomas' recommendation a few months later) did not.
His Marvel debut was the romantic-adventure story "Whom Can I Turn To?" in the Millie the Model spin-off Modeling with Millie #44 (Dec. 1965) ... for which the credits and the logo were inadvertently left off due to a production glitch, resulting in this being left off most credit lists. Thomas' first Marvel superhero scripting was "My Life for Yours", the "Iron Man" feature in Tales of Suspense #73 (Jan. 1966), working from a Lee plot as well as a plot assist from secretary Steinberg. Thomas estimates that Lee rewrote approximately half of that fledgling attempt.
Thomas' earliest Marvel work also included the teen-romance title Patsy and Hedy #104-105 (Feb.-April 1966), and two "Doctor Strange" stories, plotted by Lee and Steve Ditko, in Strange Tales #143-144 (April—May 1966). Two previously written freelance stories for Charlton Comics also saw print: "The Second Trojan War" in Son of Vulcan #50 (Jan. 1966) and "The Eye of Horus" in Blue Beetle #54 (March 1966). "When Stan saw the couple of Charlton stories I'd written earlier in more of a Gardner Fox style, he wasn't too impressed," Thomas recalled. "It's probably a good thing I already had my job at Marvel at that point! I think I was the right person in the right place at the right time, but there are other people who, had they been there, might have been just as right."
Thomas took on what would be his first long-term Marvel title, the World War II series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, starting with #29 (April 1966) and continuing through #41 (April 1967) and the series' 1966 annual, Sgt. Fury Special #2. He also began writing the mutant-superteam title [[Uncanny X-Men|[Uncanny] X-Men]] from #20-43 (May 1966 - April 1968), and, finally, took over The Avengers, starting with #35 (Dec. 1966), and continuing until 1972. That notable run was marked by a strong sense of continuity, and stories that ranged from the personal to the cosmic ... the latter most prominently with the Kree-Skrull War in issues #89-97 (June 1971 - March 1972). Additional work included an occasional "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D" and "Doctor Strange" story in Strange Tales. When that title became the solo comic Doctor Strange, he wrote the entire run of new stories, from #169-183 (June 1968 - Nov. 1969), mostly with the art team of penciler Gene Colan and inker Tom Palmer.
As Thomas self-evaluated in a 1981 interview, shortly after leaving Marvel for rival DC Comics, "One of the reasons Stan liked my writing ... was that after a few issues he felt he could trust me enough that he virtually never again read anything I wrote ... well, at least not more than a page or two in a row, just to keep me honest."
Thomas eloped in July 1968 to marry his first wife, Jean Maxey, returning to work a day late from a weekend comic-book convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Thomas said in 2000 that Brodsky, in the interim, had assigned Doctor Strange to the writer Archie Goodwin, newly ensconced at Marvel and writing Iron Man, but Thomas convinced Brodsky to return it to him. "I got very possessive about Doctor Strange," Thomas recalled. "It wasn't a huge seller, but [by the time it was canceled], we were selling in the low 40 percent range of more than 400,000 print run, so it was actually selling a couple hundred thousand copies [but] at the time you needed to sell even more."Thomas, who had turned over X-Men to other writers, returned with issue #56 (May 1969) when the series was on the verge of cancellation. While efforts to save it failed ... the title ended its initial run with #66 ... Thomas' collaboration with artist Neal Adams through #63 (Dec. 1969) is regarded as a Silver Age creative highlight. Thomas won the 1969 Alley Award that year for Best Writer, while Adams and inker Tom Palmer, netted 1969 Alley Awards for Best Pencil Artist and Best Inking Artist, respectively.
In 1971, with Stan Lee and Gerry Conway, Thomas created Man-Thing and wrote the first Man-Thing story in color comics, after Conway and Len Wein introduced the character in the black-and-white comics magazine Savage Tales.
Editor-in-chief
In 1972, when Lee became Marvel's publisher, Thomas succeeded him as editor-in-chief. Thomas by this time had already launched Conan the Barbarian, an initially low-selling surprise success due to Thomas' accessible adaptations and original stories, combined with the detailed, Beaux Arts-inspired illustrations of Barry Windsor-Smith. Thomas, who stepped down from his editorship in August 1974, wrote hundreds of Conan stories in a host of Marvel comics and black-and-white magazines. During that time, he and Smith used R.E. Howards' little known sword-wielding woman-warrior Red Sonja, initially as a Conan supporting character.
Thomas also continued to script mainstream titles, including Marvel's flagships, The Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man. He launched such new titles as the unusual "non-team" series The Defenders, as well as What If, a title that explored alternate histories. In addition, he indulged his love of Golden Age comic-book heroes in the World War II-set superhero series The Invaders. Thomas also helped create such new characters as the superpowered martial artist Iron Fist, the supernatural Brother Voodoo, and the demonic, motorcycle-driving Ghost Rider; had a behind-the-scenes role in creating the revamped X-Men team that would emerge as an eventual blockbuster; and was instrumental in engineering Marvel's comic-book adaptation of the movie Star Wars, without which, 1980s editor Jim Shooter believed, "[W]e would have gone out of business".
DC Comics and later career
In 1981, after several years of freelancing for Marvel and a dispute with then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Thomas signed a three-year exclusivity writing/editing contract with DC. He marked his return to DC with a two part Green Lantern story, and briefly wrote Batman, DC Comics Presents, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC gave Thomas' work a major promotional push by featuring several of his series in free, 16-page insert previews. Thomas married his second wife Danette Couto in May 1981. Danette legally changed her first name to Dann and would become Roy's regular writing partner. Roy credits her with the original idea for the Arak, Son of Thunder series drawn by Ernie Colón. Gerry Conway would also be a frequent collaborator with Roy Thomas. Together they wrote a two-part Superman-Captain Marvel team-up in DC Comics Presents, a series of Atari Force and Swordquest mini-comics packaged with Atari 2600 video games, and three Justice League-Justice Society crossovers. Conway also contributed ideas to the funny animal comic Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! created by Thomas and Scott Shaw. Thomas and Conway were to be the co-writers of the JLA/Avengers intercompany crossover but editorial disputes between DC and Marvel caused the project's cancellation. As a solo writer, Roy Thomas wrote Wonder Woman and, with artist Gene Colan, updated the character's costume and introduced a new supervillainess, the Silver Swan.
Thomas realized a childhood dream in writing the Justice Society of America (JSA). Reviving the Golden Age group in Justice League of America #193 and continuing in All-Star Squadron, he wrote retro adventures, like those of The Invaders, set in World War II. In addition to the JSA's high-profile heroes, Thomas revived such characters as Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, the Shining Knight, Robotman, Firebrand, the Tarantula, and Neptune Perkins. He used the series to address the complicated and sometimes contradictory continuity issues surrounding the JSA.
In 1984, Thomas and artist Jerry Ordway launched a JSA spin-off, Infinity Inc., set in the present day and depicting the adventures of the JSA's children. After Ordway's departure from the series, Thomas' other artistic collaborators included Don Newton, Todd McFarlane, and Michael Bair. Thomas wrote several limited series for DC including America vs. the Justice Society, Jonni Thunder a.k.a. Thunderbolt, Shazam! The New Beginning, and Crimson Avenger. From 1986 to 1988, Thomas was a major contributor to the Secret Origins series and wrote most of the stories involving the Golden Age characters. The Young All-Stars replaced All-Star Squadron following the changes to DC's continuity brought about by the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series. Thomas's last major project for DC was an adaptation of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle drawn by Gil Kane and published in 1989-1990. Since then, Thomas has written a trio of Elseworlds one-shots combining DC characters with classic cinema and literature: Superman's Metropolis, Superman: War of the Worlds, and JLA: The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Thomas and Gerry Conway collaborated on the screenplays for two movies: the animated feature Fire and Ice (1983) and Conan the Destroyer (1984).
By 1987 following Jim Shooter's departure from Marvel Comics, Thomas returned to Marvel, scripting titles starring Doctor Strange, Thor, the Avengers West Coast, and Conan, now often co-scripting with his wife, Dann Thomas, or with Jean-Marc Lofficier.
During the 1990s, Thomas began working less for Marvel and DC than for independent companies. He wrote issues of the TV-series tie-ins Warrior Princess and The Legendary Journeys for Topps Comics, Additionally, he began writing more for other media, including television, and relaunched Alter Ego as a formal magazine published by TwoMorrows Publishing in 1999. In 2005, he earned a Master's degree in Humanities from California State University. As of 2008, he lives in South Carolina, and is co-chairman of the board of directors of the comic-book industry charity The Hero Initiative.
Anthem, a comic book series by Thomas and artists Daniel Acuña, Jorge Santamaria Garcia and Benito Gallego, about World War II superheroes in an alternate reality, began publication by Heroic Publishing in January 2006. Thomas returned to Red Sonja in 2006, writing the one-shot Red Sonja Monster Island for Dynamite Comics. In 2007 Thomas wrote a Black Knight story for the four-issue miniseries, Mystic Arcana, his first work at his old company in several years.
